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Thursday, December 08, 2022

Bring Back Chief Justice Rehnquist

Gerard N. Magliocca

I want to second Will Baude's post on Volokh about the terrible trend in the Supreme Court's arguments towards long and tedious speeches by the Justices. While the pandemic required adjustments in the format, now I long for the days where Chief Justice Rehnquist cut off lawyers as soon as their red light came on and there was no extra round of questions. Except in rare circumstances, the Court doesn't need more than an hour for a case. Anything more than an hour becomes repetitive and useless.

I'm less clear about whether the Justices are ruder to counsel nowadays. There are stories of past Justices who would turn their back on counsel when they didn't like an answer, which strikes me as worse than an interruption. But some of them can clearly do better.


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